Obama: ‘I Was There Early’ on Linsanity

Linsanity has reached a fever pitch in recent weeks, but the leader of the free world said Thursday he was a fan before Jeremy Lin was a household name.

“I knew about Jeremy before you did, or everybody else did, because Arne Duncan, my secretary of education, was captain of the Harvard team,” President Barack Obama said in an interview about sports with columnist and author Bill Simmons. “So I’ve been on the Jeremy Lin bandwagon for a while.” Mr. Duncan, of course, graduated a few years earlier than Mr. Lin, but still follows Crimson basketball.

Mr. Simmons asked Mr. Obama if he was taking credit for Linsanity. “It kind of feels like you are a little bit.”

“I can’t take credit for it, but I’m just saying I was there early,” Mr. Obama said.

In the course of a month, Mr. Lin has gone from a little-known point guard for The New York Knicks to superstardom with a series of breathtaking clutch baskets. Mr. Lin, a Harvard graduate, had been cut by several teams before being picked up by the Knicks.

Mr. Obama still plays basketball in his spare time and sometimes coaches his daughters’ basketball teams. “Watching 9, 10-year-old girls playing basketball and just fierce, just intense about it, is terrific,” he said.

The president also said “is about the most stressful thing” to throw the opening pitch in a baseball game.

Mr. Obama said the bulletproof vest he has to wear makes it difficult to throw a fast pitch. “Each time I go up there my thinking is, All right, I’m just going to blaze this thing in. And then I’m thinking, Man, if I throw a grounder that’s going to be a problem. So then I end up kind of lofting it up a little bit,” Mr. Obama said.

He also heaped praise on former President George W. Bush for throwing a strike in the opening pitch at Game 3 of the 2001 World Series between the Yankees and Arizona Diamondbacks.

“Right down the middle,” Mr. Obama said of Mr. Bush’s throw, which was just a month after the Sept. 11th terrorist attacks. “And huge credit for that. I give that guy a lot of props for that one.”

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